The quarry was a rocky pit no longer. The once granite faces were alive with waving fronds. Their foliage, as years passed, was becoming earth with a freckling of flowers. In their time they too would become the soil and, in more time still, we’d be standing upon a new meadow. The tincture of nature will become a bathing aroma. The ground will regain its natural cushioning.
From the safety of the shadows, she watched. Remaining hidden was the only guarantee of seeing another day, yet it also guaranteed his end. Then who was it that would wake up tomorrow? Not this version of her, not a version of herself she would ever respect or forgive. To go out there alone, however, would most certainly mean two body bags instead of one. So, she raised the silent alarm, prayed her friends would arrive in time, and struck a bold pose in the streetlamp’s glow.
Behind his crumpled form, even the flowers collapsed in a desolate solidarity. As his eyes rained, the skies cried upon them and every hue of that living photograph was greyed.
Money spiders fanned out over her palm, their tiny legs all of a tickle. She giggled. How intense they were, absorbed by a common purpose. Theirs was a sweet chaos, the kind you see in every schoolyard at playtime. Tip, tapperty, tap, tip: went hundreds of feet that weren’t feet at all. Her hand lowered to a nearby sunwarm rock to enable them to disembark. Away they streamed in arachnid merriment, this shoal of eight legged friends.
From average legs came titan strides, upon the sunlit moon. The dialled down gravity showed in our faces too. For, behind our tinted visors, we bore the most childishly happy grins. If we ‘soup-can’ astronauts were emojis, we’d be a mischievous elation. In the expanse of the heavens, our combined heartbeat came as the lone challenger to silence. In that, in perfect duality with the joy, we made a soundtrack of togetherness-sombre-solitude. Of all the people, in all the world, that experience belonged to us.
The fairies brought colours to the clouds as if they were spring flowers in a meadow. How they sang! Oh, their songs! They came to our ears as if they were a month of rest, a ballroom dance and a feast for the soul. Only the fairies can make you feel this way, you see. Only they! The air around them was so sweet it could be the icing upon a grand cake, the aroma brought cherry blossoms to the imagination. Then, upon seeing our approach they gathered around to hear tell of our adventures.